Mercedes F1 team boss reveals Hamilton's 'very deep wounds'
Jan.20 - There are "very deep" wounds within Lewis Hamilton after the controversial finale to the ultra-intense 2021 title battle, Toto Wolff has revealed.
Rumours are swirling that Hamilton, who has been completely silent and unseen for weeks, may even hang up his helmet before the start of the 2022 season.
Mercedes team boss Wolff admits the wounds run "very deep".
"We love this sport because it's honest," he told Auto Motor und Sport. "The stopwatch never lies.
"But when we break the fundamental principle of fairness and the stopwatch is no longer relevant, that's when you doubt this sport. When all your work, blood, sweat and tears can be taken away from you.
"I don't think we'll ever get over that, especially Lewis as a driver."
Wolff, who has denied demanding that race director Michael Masi is fired, does admit that he wants "actions and not just words" to be the outcome of the FIA's current investigation.
"In a sport that's supposed to be a sport, we can't freestyle like that with the rules," he said.
"Before the start of the new season, there must be clarity about the rules so that every driver, team and fan knows what is allowed and what is not.
"In the end we provide entertainment, but no decision should break the rules for the sake of the show."
If he does return, 37-year-old Hamilton will face a challenge in addition to trying to win back the lost crown from Red Bull's Max Verstappen - his new and young charger of a teammate, George Russell.
When asked if Hamilton has the strength to withstand losses to yet another youngster, Wolff answered: "Lewis' ability to withstand is often wrongly questioned.
"Even after Abu Dhabi, he immediately congratulated Max. Lewis only wants one thing: fair competition on the track.
"That's what we'll deliver," he vowed.
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"We love this sport because it's honest," he told Auto Motor und Sport. "The stopwatch never lies."
Well then, Mr. Wolff, considering not just the finale fiasco but the entire '21 season, it is clear that young Max was faster than the knight. You lost, get over it.
Really old racer. Should it be right that Toto Wolf along with Lewis Hamilton could actually get racing director Masi the sack because they didn't like the result.
That Lewis Hamilton has been touched 'in his soul', will probably only have been understood by his true fans and the righteous among mankind. Last week I already motivated elsewhere on this site, that it is very likely not simply going about 'taking a loss' (see there).
Lewis Hamilton remained a positive and sociable soul over the years, despites his rising star over the years. Someone who likes to break a lance against injustice and he always radiated that.
As a result he has not only gathered many supporters in the United Kingdom and in Germany, but all over the globe.
According to my opinion, the way he was treated in Abu Dhabi had fundamentally to do with what he always fights: injustice and unsportsmanship. Because I think that this comes from his 'soul', it must be that this wounded his soul. Not because of losing the first place in Abu Dhabi.
Soon after the finish in Abu Dhabi I feared already that he might leave: purely out of disillusionment and lost confidence. Especially now that influential persons in the F1 world have already ventilated a year now that he should leave after seven titles.
Nowhere in the professional sports world a topsportsman or a topclub ever had to leave after years of success. Nowhere!
And particularly now, when Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton causing a huge revival in F1: remains completely unclear why the worldwide popular Lewis Hamilton should leave
Even Max Verstappen has expressed his hope that Lewis Hamilton will return to the ring. To give all 'true F1 fans' another wonderful F1 year.
Toto Wolff quite rightly noted that these two top drivers stil going far ahead of the current field of drivers. And i suppose that is what 'fans' want to see.
My own expectation is that Lewis Hamilton will not return into the ring, if Abu Dhabi's arbitrariness 2021 Abu Dhabi is allowed to continue.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem recently said that 'Lewis Hamilton belongs in the F1 ring'. This is why i put my hope in him now by restoring trust, through fair and transparent regulation, free from any space for arbitrariness.
For Lewis Hamilton again a music selection:
"Get Up, Stand Up", Bob Marley
"Don't Look Back", Peter Tosh & Mick Jagger
🥇8th🥇And Grab the Eighth F1-Title in 2022: 🥇🏆🥇
(for all F1-fans around the globe)
OMG Maria...where should I start with a reply for you?? The new tires on Max's car is what won him the race. There was NOWAY Lewis could win and the last lap clearly showed this as he failed to overtake Max after Max had overtaken Sir Lewis. There is no "box of tricks" on the part of the FIA. I believe this is a fabulation on your part. As I have posted in a reply (see there) Lewis was allowed in a previous race to unlap himself under a safety car. What is the difference here?? Was this also a FIA "bag of tricks" so Sir Lewis would win?? Sir Lewis lost fair and square and all this talk will not put him across the finish line first. Any F1 driver must have not only driving skills but a very strong emotional strength and vision that they are the best and need to win attitude. To lose is tough and requires time to recover that strength.
There are two Michael Schumacher videos or movies on the internet I fell you should see as to how MS handled defeat. We also have seen that no one is so great that they can't be replaced, or someone is able to overtake them. As it is said "The King is dead, long live the king".
Have a good day :-)
My God, Maria, the guy drives race cars.....nothing more. BTW, there have been many top athletes who have retired at the top of their game after years of success. How about another knight, Sir John Young Stewart?
I can't imagine that Sir (Jackie) Stewart really means that Lewis Hamilton should retire after 7 titles. I can't imagine this from any former top driver. I suspect that this is 'talked into' by influential bobo's within the F1-world.
Who would have talked Michael Schumacher out of F1 after his 7th title?
Most great drivers within F1 stucked on 3 titles. But I don't think this was because they were 'forced' to make way for 'young talent'. Much more plausible to me is that many stopped then because racing in F1 was much more dangerous in the past.
As a Dutch i will back Lewis Hamilton to take his 8th titel and until he decides to leave F1 in free choice. And on the mean while i will back Max as well.
Ror,Where do you start with that sermon, i mean there are so many things incorrect factually, ie Lord Lewis fanbase/popularity in Britain , the evidence shows , hes less popular now due to this foot stamping baby fit hes having and as for more fans in Germany because of Lord Lewis , er factually also way way wrong .
Again the clocks ticking LL 4 weeks 5 days till testing, not to mention the cars Launch date, I really hope he attends or Merc BoD will surely step in, the amount of Positive Pr they COULD have spun since Dec 12 was huge, but No, all all negative and gotten worse, hes not still annoyed and p@@sed off , Hes now an embarrassment to his team , his employer, his sponsors the sport and the Fans Imo .
Even if he makes a public statement, today,tomorrow that his heads ok and hes ready to fight, are we really , really going to believe that ? with the longest season in F1 history fast approaching .
Your comments are highly correct anyway. Thank you.
Lewis is an insecure drama queen who identifies with the victim mentality. Spoiled brat. Suck it up and be a man.
Lewis Hamilton is indeed no robot but a sensitive and intelligent person. That is why many people like him, while many others dislike him. When you read comments under articles on special F1-sites today, you can read, that the majority of commentators is not interested in facts or sence anyway. They look often more as hyena's. So i can imagine in addition: that Lewis Hamilton avoids the social media at this moment too: too much negative energy for a positive person.
A drama queen for sure. What about the time he was allowed to unlap himself and finish in the top three? The results of the race are correct because the best team made correct decisions on pit stops. The FIA allowed the lapped cars to be removed from the competition so the two contenders for the championship could decide the finish between themselves. I see not fault in any of this.
To Steven R. Gierke 22.01.2022 17:09:
The Abu Dhabi 12.12.21 facts again:
Lewis Hamilton had a lead of over 11.5 seconds when the yellow flag flew on lap 54 /:55. The safety car followed and the field collapsed. If the race had ended under a safety car, according to the existing race ranking at the yellow flag, Lewis Hamilton would have crossed the finish line first, because no one is allowed to overtake under the safety car. (Despite his old tires).
However, this did not happen. Without even doing justice for 1 second to Lewis Hamilton's unstoppable lead, he decided to give a final "race bonus" for the fans. Red Bull was very alert and hoped for a miracle: Max Verstappen was brought into the pit to put on soft tires for a possible final race. While Lewis Hamilton could no longer do this, because he would have lost his first position under the safety car. Lewis was therefore twice disadvantaged: he also had to enter a final lap on tires from the first pit stop (This would not had been a problem with a finish under safetycar!). This was known to everyone, including to race director Masi. To make matters worse for Lewis Hamilton, Masi also removed all racers between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. So that the two title fighters were almost side by side for 1 final lap with no previous history!
My conclusion is based on general legal thinking and not on feelings of disappointment: a race director is never entitled to this arbitrariness. Based on this arbitrariness, he nullified the entire previous race, and race director Masi decided that Abu Dhabi's title fight would be decided in just 1 lap, with Lewis on old tires and Max on fresh softies. O happy day...
I hope that FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem will now tighten the regulations in such a way that this can never happen again.
Sorry fellow F1-folks but concerning this issue: I ' ll rest my case!
Lewis Hamilton is indeed no robot but a sensitive and intelligent person. That is why many people like him, while many others dislike him. When you read comments under articles on special F1-sites today, you can read, that the majority of commentators is not interested in facts or sence anyway. They look often more as hyena's. So i can imagine in addition: that Lewis Hamilton avoids the social media at this moment too: too much negative energy for a positive person.
We read a lot about the Lewis saga, which started after his last interview with Button at Abu Dabi.
Since then the man hasn't talked or shared stuff on social media. Absolute silence, while Toto is spreading the word and feels terrible about it all. Well, Wolff and Lewis’s race engineer Bobo, know what the root cause was of the defeat.
Old tires and not being pro-active for what was always possible; a safety car.
Lewis asked at least three times for tires, and even if he had lost track position he was in the fastest car and would have been in the best position to win the race.
In the second instance, I fully agree with your reasoning. But even with old tires Lewis Hamilton would have finished first, if the race director had not pulled open his 'box of tricks'. As I have motivated last week step by step elsewhere on this site (see there). The Mercedes crew did not really had to count with this box of tricks. If one follows your analysis primary, the ball rolls to the Mercedes crew, while, in my analysis, the ball belongs primarily to race director Massi and the "generous" too open FIA-regulations. Lewis Hamilton is an excellent tire manager and earned the benefit of the doubt in Abu Dhabi. But he also pleaded in 2021 on the road for not switching tires, while there was still too long a way to go: over the radio: "too far, Lewis!" while he would have risked a blowout 🙈 with another 20 laps to go. Then only after the race can it become clear who was right. In general i would prefer to follow the tire experts first.🤔
In the second instance, I fully agree with your reasoning. But even with old tires Lewis Hamilton would have finished first, if the race director had not pulled open his 'box of tricks'. As I have motivated last week step by step elsewhere on this site (see there). The Mercedes crew did not really had to count with this box of tricks. If one follows your analysis primary, the ball rolls to the Mercedes crew, while, in my analysis, the ball belongs primarily to race director Massi and the "generous" too open FIA-regulations. Lewis Hamilton is an excellent tire manager and earned the benefit of the doubt in Abu Dhabi. But he also pleaded in 2021 on the road for not switching tires, while there was still too long a way to go: over the radio: "too far, Lewis!" while he would have risked a blowout 🙈 with another 20 laps to go. Then only after the race can it become clear who was right. In general i would prefer to follow the tire experts first.🤔
Sorry voor placing twice. Ik work with a mobile telephone here and it seems not always to work.
A few thoughts from the US:
1. Lewis is an extremely highly-paid "sportsman," not some quasi-religious sociological global phenom as Maria would have us think of him - yeah, we get it, he's mixed race/half black. We had someone like that as our President for 8 years and racism not only still exists, in many parts of the US, it's worse. So if he wants to devote his energies to anti-racism and fashion design, that leaves less for F1, no?
2. Keen-eyed among you will note the quotation marks around "sportsman" above. Personally, I found his conduct at Silverstone, after his ill-advised, dangerous and clumsy maneuver on Max at Copse put Max in the hospital and Lewis (despite the laughable 5 or 10 second penalty - he should have been black flagged on the spot and then made to sit out a race like they did to Grosjean early in his career) on the top step, reprehensible. Then he celebrates as if "all good." Disgraceful and no, not the behavior of a true sportsman or a gentleman - a highly paid, selfish, craven driver/spokesmodel, that's all. And as if that was not enough, the way he routinely treats his dogsbody Angela is repulsive and ungentlemanly - he zips thru the pit lane on his child's razor scooter while she has to run behind him to keep up, his helmet in one hand and his kit bag in the other - utterly disgraceful - one wonders if the Queen saw any of that before knighting him?
3. If Lewis is still suffering from losing the race and the championship to a much younger challenger on the last lap, might I suggest he take his Gulfstream down to Sao Paola and have a long chat with Felipe Masa about how to bounce back from something like that.
4. Not sure about the rest of the world, but here in the US there's one thing upon which Democrats and Republicans and independents can all agree - we don't like sore losers. And we're sick of Lewis' TV ads for Cloudstrike too.
Ik placed my respons to you Adrian Roscher at 15:46 hours today. I connected this replay to your post buth it appeared again single.
I've already responded in the last few weeks to all the topics you posted here. Because I don't want to keep repeating myself, I refer you to all my previous comments on this site.
To this I add:
No more bickering about Monza and Silverstone. Lewis now has 2 penalty points on his F1 license and Max 7. This means that Max was involved in more dangerous situations than Lewis last year.
Furthermore, I refer your comment about the merits of Lewis Hamilton to the wastebasket of selective indignation. Many talented top athletes earn a lot of money. That is apparently what the market want to pay for to enjoy top sports.
I find your reference here inappropriate. You are discriminating by applying different earning standards according to philosophy philosophy of life. (Article 26 United Nations Convention on Civil and Political Rights (BUPO).
In summary: Lewis Hamilton does not have to disappear from F1 because he earns more than you or me. Envy is a subjective experience.
ok Maria, you're clearly a tad delusional, quoting meaningless and irrelevant UN conventions - yeesh - and the thumbs up and down count on our respective comments seem to concur with my assessment - have a nice day!
@To Adrian Rosscher's post 24.01.2022 01.08 h.
Your unsubstantiated claims are suggestive. Only with substantiation you can turn your suggestions here into "facts".
Here on the site is clearly being manipulated with thumbs lately, probably by yourself? I've been used to this comments manipulations from a deranged web stalker since 2004. A web stalker who appears with endless fake identities and nationalities but always with the same web pollution with which he/she only is to identify. A stalker I never had anything to do with and never had had anything to do with outside of the web. Also, several times while posting here, my phone editor was hacked due to an illegal link to another network, while I don't have that for this phone and never have either. 👨💻🧟♂️🤳
Explanation:
I made a speech here specifically aimed at (professional) and concerned thinkers about the application of FIA law in Abu Dhabi on December 12, 2021. Application of law is also a specialty. You gave no counter-arguments to this. Your personal experiences of Lewis Hamilton's business, commercials, earnings and dog are completely off topic. They indicate perhaos something about yourself.💤
So in order not to be taken away from my goal here, and not to be swept up in a stream of negativity, I'll leave it at that.🐞
To real F1 fans here:
Maybe until the end of March when the races start again! 🏆8th/nr.44🏆
Your unsubstantiated claims are suggestive. Only with substantiation you can turn your suggestions here into "facts".
AS ARE YOURS ...
No this is between to whom i wrote to.
OMG Maria, you really do sound like you need some mental health help - please consider that for your own sake. Also, this is a F1 fan opinion page not some vague "international law" debate - there is no such thing as "FIA law" - only the rules that a private sanctioning body makes for its voluntary members - rules that apparently gave Massi the right to call it the way he did - also, I hope English isn't your first language because your rambling rants are also grammatical and syntactical nightmares.
Eindelijk vond ik een professioneel commentaar op de door mij bedoelde aanraking in bocht 6 van ronde 1 in Abu Dhabi op 12-12-2021.
Lees in deze link, onder punt 1 van de analyse van de Spaanse krant Marca:
https:// amp.marca.com/en/f1/2021/12/12/61b614b9268e3eae048b45c9.html
> U zult eerst de h e l e url zelf moeten intikken, omdat een gelinkte url eventueel hier wordt geblokkeerd.
De uitzwaai die Lewis Hamilton hier moest maken om een crash af te wenden, was dus noodzakelijk. De eventuele seconde(n) tijdwinst door vluchten via een binnenbocht, zal daarom ook wel genegeerd zijn: als een compensatie voor een overtreding. Zover mijn kennis gaat van de regels, moest Max aan Lewis ruimte geven om te passeren, omdat Lewis hem al half had ingehaald. Lewis klaagde later tevergeefs hierover.
Het is daarom buiten de werkelijkheid, om te beweren, dat Lewis zijn latere voorsprong van 11/12 seconden in lap 55 hieraan had te danken.
RedBull/Honda en Mercedes doen wat zij kunnen om te winnen. De arbitrage oordeelt gunstig/ongunstig. Het publiek 'bedenkt' de rest.
In English:
Finally I found a professional commentary on my intended touch at Turn 6 of Round 1 in Abu Dhabi on 12/12/2021.
Read in this link, under point 1 of the analysis of the Spanish newspaper Marca:
https://
amp.marca.com/en/f1/
2021/12/12/61b614b9268e
3eae048b45c9.html
> You will first have to enter the whole url yourself, because a linked url may be blocked here.
The move that Lewis Hamilton had to make here to avoid a crash was therefore necessary. Any second(s) of time gained by fleeing through an inside curb will therefore also have been ignored: as compensation for a violation of thr rules.
As far as my knowledge of the rules goes, Max had to give Lewis space to pass, because Lewis had already half overtaken him. Lewis later complained about this too.
It is therefore unrealistic to claim that Lewis owed his subsequent 11/12 second lead in lap 55 to this.
RedBull/Honda and Mercedes are doing what they can to win. The arbitration rules favourable/unfavourable. The public 'makes up' the rest.
Finally I found a professional commentary on my intended touch at Turn 6 of Round 1 in Abu Dhabi on 12/12/2021.
Read in this link, under point 1 of the analysis of the Spanish newspaper Marca:
https://
amp.marca.com/en/f1/
2021/12/12/61b614b9268e
3eae048b45c9.html
> You will first have to enter the whole url yourself, because a linked url may be blocked here.
The move that Lewis Hamilton had to make here to avoid a crash was therefore necessary. Any second(s) of time gained by fleeing through an inside curb will therefore also have been ignored: as compensation for a violation of thr rules.
As far as my knowledge of the rules goes, Max had to give Lewis space to pass, because Lewis had already half overtaken him. Lewis later complained about this too.
It is therefore unrealistic to claim that Lewis owed his subsequent 11/12 second lead in lap 55 to this.
RedBull/Honda and Mercedes are doing what they can to win. The arbitration rules favourable/unfavourable. The public 'makes up' the rest.
Diddums
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